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Wednesday, May 11, 2016

You may have read my interview with Clare Maguire on the BBC website yesterday. If not it's worth checking out. I mean, obviously. All of my articles are essential reading. But Clare's account of the alcoholism that nearly claimed her life is moving, honest and raw.

The important thing is that Clare recovered. She's been sober for years, and poured all of that heartbreak, all of that frustration, all of that insecurity into her new album, Stranger Things Have Happened.

Here's the current single, Elizabeth Taylor.

Last night, she posted a live version of the album's opening track Faded. It's one of my favourites - based around a piano figure that recalls Nina Simone's Sinnerman.

Although it didn't make it into the interview, Clare spoke to me about how she wrote the song with pianist Sam Beste [Amy Winehouse] and producer Blue May [Robyn, AlunaGeorge, Kindness]

"That was one of the last ones we wrote. It happened about two o’clock in the morning. We were just sitting in Blue’s studio and Sam came on that chord sequence. I asked Blue to start playing the bass and I sat there on a chair and wrote it as they were playing.

"Faded is really me talking about addiction and thinking about why I always wanted this intense feeling of oblivion. Always, constantly. Like I want everything to stop. And I think that's probably what led me to becoming an addict, that feeling. I've always been chasing something, but never really understood what it was.

"That's calmed down a lot in the past two years. I’ve become comfortable in myself – because in the past I wasn’t at all. Faded is me reflecting on that."